Outside Canada · Germany / AfD / viral quote · September 13, 2026

Alice Weidel “fishing licence” quote checked: she repeated it, but it was not hers

PBC Outside Canada source-check on a Facebook post attributing the fishing-licence / illegal-border-crossing quote to AfD leader Alice Weidel.

Verdict: mostly true that Weidel repeated the line, but misleading if read as her own fresh statement. The official Bundestag record shows she used it in 2018 as a quote attributed to Miloš Zeman; DPA later reported that Zeman denied authorship and that similar English wording circulated online years earlier.

What the Facebook post says

The post attributes this line to Alice Weidel: “A country that punishes for fishing without a license, but not for crossing its borders illegally, is a country governed by idiots.”

The public Facebook page exposed only metadata and a preview image. The attached video was not downloadable without login, so this source-check does not claim a video transcript.

What the record shows

The Bundestag stenographic report for May 16, 2018 records Weidel closing her speech with the German wording:

Falls Sie in einem Land leben, in dem Sie für das Fischen ohne Angelschein bestraft werden, jedoch nicht für den illegalen Grenzübertritt ohne gültigen Reisepass, dann haben Sie das volle Recht, zu sagen, dieses Land wird von Idioten regiert.

But she introduced it as a quote from the “former Czech president Zeman.”

Why the attribution matters

The social version compresses three different points into one viral quote card: Weidel repeated the line; she was not clearly the original author; and the Zeman attribution has been fact-checked as false. DPA reported in 2020 that Zeman's spokesperson said Zeman never said those words, even if he generally agreed with the sentiment. DPA also traced similar English wording to a 2013 U.S. internet quote that had been wrongly attributed to comedian Jeff Foxworthy.

Policy caution: the border-law half is not that simple

The quote is a political slogan, not a careful legal summary. Germany's Interior Ministry states that illegal entry and residence are punishable. German Residence Act §95 includes punishment for unlawful entry under §14, while asylum/refugee protections and prosecutorial practice can affect whether a person is punished in a particular case. That means the slogan points to a real enforcement debate, but the blanket claim that illegal border crossing is “not punished” is too simple.

Claim table

Claim	Evidence label	Notes
Weidel said the fishing-licence / border-crossing line.	Mostly true	She repeated it in the Bundestag in 2018.
It was Weidel's own original quote.	Not supported	She presented it as a Zeman quote.
Zeman said it.	Contradicted	DPA says Zeman's spokesperson denied that he authored it.
Germany does not punish illegal border crossing.	Oversimplified	German official sources say illegal entry and residence are punishable; asylum-law exceptions and enforcement details complicate the picture.

Source package

Primary sources checked

Deutscher Bundestag Plenarprotokoll 19/32, May 16, 2018.
DPA fact-check on the Zeman attribution.
Reuters/Algemeiner 2018 coverage of Weidel's Bundestag speech.
Germany Interior Ministry entry/residence page and Residence Act §§14, 95.
Snopes and PolitiFact background on the older English version.